President Obama said it exactly right in his Rose Garden remarks this morning about mine safety:
But we owe them more than prayers. We owe them action. We owe them accountability. We owe them an assurance that when they go to work every day, when they enter that dark mine, they are not alone. They ought to know that behind them there is a company that’s doing what it takes to protect them, and a government that is looking out for their safety. ...
I want to emphasize that this investigation is ongoing, and there’s still a lot that we don’t know. But we do know that this tragedy was triggered by a failure at the Upper Big Branch mine -- a failure first and foremost of management, but also a failure of oversight and a failure of laws so riddled with loopholes that they allow unsafe conditions to continue. ...
But this isn’t just about a single mine. It’s about all of our mines. The safety record at the Massey Upper Big Branch mine was troubling. And it’s clear that while there are many responsible companies, far too many mines aren’t doing enough to protect their workers’ safety.
The President went on to say that he's ordered the Secretary of Labor and the folks at the Mine Safety and Health Administration to streamline some procedures, to review some rules with an eye toward tightening them, and to bust companies that engage in a pattern of violations the way Massey Energy did in the operation where 29 miners met their deaths last week. That's the right approach, to be sure.
But it's more than a little depressing that we've heard this kind of talk before. As the President pointed out, changes were promised after the Sago disaster killed 12 miners four years ago. As I noted last night, there were five investigations of Sago, including Davitt McAteer's report ordered by West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin. Now we've got MSHA investigating and Manchin's again asked the tough, savvy McAteer to conduct his own probe into what happened in Upper Big Branch mine. Congress may decide to take a look again, too.
Of course, after Sago disaster, we had George Bush's appointee running MSHA, a guy who had headed a company that had twice the industry average number of mining-related accidents. Since October, after confirmation delays, that post has ben occupied by Joe Main, a coal miner and mining safety expert with a union background. So the chances that Washington will stop letting companies dick around with miners' lives seem a good deal more positive than when Cheney-Bush were running the show. But, as McAteer told James Ridgeway:
...the federal government all along had the authority to shut down the Upper Big Branch mine, which had "a record of terrible practices" and had been cited for numerous previous safety violations. The feds could have pulled the plug on Massey's operations until the safety problems were fixed, he said, "if they had the balls."
One of the first steps MSHA should take is stare down the owners on this list of dangerous mines released today by Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. In lethal irony, appeals of safety violations prevented the agency from targeting them for additional scrutiny. One of those 48 mines? Upper Big Branch.
Under current law, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration issues a letter to frequent violators warning them that they may be sanctioned under a so-called ‘pattern of violation’. Once a mine is notified that they may be under a pattern of violation, the mine must take immediate actions to reduce future violations – approved by federal mine safety officials – or face drastic sanctions including mine closure for any future significant and substantial violation.
The list released by the committee today are those 48 mines that would have received this notice of a potential pattern of violation sanctions in October 2009 but for contested citations that had not been resolved due to delays caused by the backlog of more than 16,000 operator appeals
You can read the entire list of dangerous mines below the fold. Twenty-three of them are coal mines in West Virginia.
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MeMeMeMeMe has a diary discussing the issue here.
Mine Name | City |
COAL MINESElkville No. 1 Mine | Jackson County, IL |
Deep Mine No. 8 | Wayne County, WV |
Copley Trace Surface Mine | Wayne County, WV |
Allegiance Mine | Boone County, WV |
Liberty Processing | Boone County, WV |
American Eagle Mine | Kanawha County, WV |
Highland 9 Mine | Union County, KY |
Coalburg No. 1 Mine | Boone County, WV |
Dorothy No 3 Mine | Boone County, WV |
Roundbottom Powellton Deep Mine | Boone County, WV |
Slip Ridge Cedar Grove Mine | Raleigh County, WV |
Broad Run Mine | Mason County, WV |
Mine #1 | Pike County, KY |
Toney Fork Surface Mine | Logan County, WV |
Upper Big Branch Mine-South | Raleigh County, WV |
Mine #28 | Pike County, KY |
Winchester Mine | Kanawha County, WV |
Tipple #1 | Wise County, VA |
Mine No. 35 | Mcdowell County, WV |
Mine No. 37 | Mcdowell County, WV |
Mine No. 36 | Mcdowell County, WV |
Big Mountain No 16 | Boone County, WV |
Horizon Mine | Carbon County, UT |
Josephine No 2 Mine | Raleigh County, WV |
Mine #2 | Knott County, KY |
Kemmerer Mine | Lincoln County, WY |
Beckley Pocahontas Mine | Raleigh County, WV |
Pond Creek Mine No. 1 | Mingo County, WV |
Garland Mine | Bourbon County, KS |
Coalburg No 2 Mine | Logan County, WV |
Kayenta Mine | Navajo County, AZ |
Midland Trail Mine No. 2 | Greenbrier County, WV |
METAL/NON-METALSreebs Slate & Stone Co. Inc. | Northampton County, PA |
Giant Cement Company | Dorchester County, SC |
Selma Plant Quarry & Mill | Jefferson County, MO |
Saint-Gobain Proppants | Sebastian County, AR |
Bear River Zeolite | Franklin County, ID |
Meikle Mine | Eureka County, NV |
Essroc Cement Corp - Bessemer PA | Lawrence County, PA |
Lebec Cement Plant | Kern County, CA |
Harleyville Mine & Plant | Dorchester County, SC |
Deep Post | Eureka County, NV |
Eureka County, NV | San Patricio County, TX |
Holcim (US) Inc | Greene County, NY |
Genesis IncTroy Mine | Lincoln County, MT |
Leeds Plant | Jefferson County, AL |
Seattle Plant | King County, WA |
Miami Cement Plant | Dade County, FL |